I want to apologize to everybody for going silent on the blog for so long. If you've been keeping up with me on Facebook (you can do that, if you want) you know that of late I have been working virtually non-stop on the revision of my book Mass Confusion.
The new title will be Mass Revision. It focuses on the new translation of the Mass that is about to come out, updates for the last 12 years of liturgical law, and has a bunch of new features the old version lacked.
But it was very labor intensive to produce, and I had only two months to do it in, so I was working from as early as 6 a.m. to as late as 9:30 p.m–including on Saturdays and Sundays (the latter of which I'm really hesitant to do), having to cancel dance events and getting other callers to sub for me, etc.
As a result, I got behind on blogging (both here and at the National Catholic Register) and e-mail. I meant to get a note up here about what was going on, but didn't.
So I want to apologize. Will endeavor to keep it from happening again.
Fortunately, I shouldn't hit another "crunch time" of that severity for a number of months–at least! (Future projects are likely to be on a less time-compressed schedule.)
So I now have two books in the production pipeline (meaning: out of my hands and at the publishers'): The Fathers Know Best: Your Essential Guide to Early Church Teachings and Mass Revision: Your Essential Guide to the Changes in the Liturgy. Both should be out in a matter of months. Will keep you posted.
In the mean time, the blog is now open for business. What do y'all want to talk about?
I’d like to ask the panel what they would do if they were Hitler.
Oh, and very glad your baaaaaa-aaaack!
Well, speaking personally, I would annex the Sudetenland.
I would shave my Oliver Hardy-like moustache and get a very good psychotherapist. Those are the first two I could think of. There will be others I’m sure.
The “Mass Revision” book sounds interesting and useful. Thanks for all the hours you put into it.
Were either of these books one of your secret projects?
Yeah, whatever happened to the secret and super secret projects?
Jimmy, I’ve got a question for you. What does it really mean, on a day-to-day basis, if someone is excommunicated?
Here’s where I’m coming from: If someone commits a mortal sin, he can’t (or shouldn’t) go to communion until he repents and makes a good confession. If someone is under interdict, he can’t (or shouldn’t) receive communion until the interdict is lifted. If someone is excommunicated, he can’t (or shouldn’t) go to communion until the excommunication is lifted.
Okay, but if you have one of those automatic excommunications that aren’t reserved to the bishop or something, then you can have the excommunication lifted by repenting and making a good confession.
So, what’s the difference? Surely, we keep hearing that excommunication is not the same thing as being excluded from receiving communion. Okay, but if it’s not the same thing, what’s different about it?
I ask the question out of sincere confusion, and not in any way to be tendentious or argumentative.
Thanks!
A few weeks ago you posted a list of fiction books you recommend. Have you ever posted your non-fiction list?
I also would like to hear more about the secret projects. I think it’s been several years since you blogged about them, and one was supposed to revolutionize the field of apologetics. Please don’t simply carry that secret to the grave. You’re killing me.
JIMMY!!!! Can you answer my question on hell?
You should talk about that, yeah!
The Pachyderminator,
Maybe the secret is that Jimmy was a ghost writer for “Lost.” That would also explain why he waited years before revealing the secret. ;-D
Ah, I remember the original book.
The shock, the horror, the dismay of it all. The demonstrated widespread disobedience.
Another one should be quite nice and drive many more people to the TLM to escape the horror and not have to practice the interior discipline to overcome it and still take joy during masses done disobediently and irreverently.
Though given one of the VERY debatable answers given about liturgical questions at CA recently, I wonder what the answers in it will be to stuff like kneeling for Communion.
🙂 The war on devotion continues.
Care to share what the very debatable answer was? (Leaving out names. We should stick to issues and not drag individuals into it.)
I’d be curious how to find out what rite one is. I have a friend who was born to a Latin mother and a Ukrainian Catholic father and was baptized in a Byzantine Catholic church. As we understand it, it depends on what year he was baptized in, but we’re not sure how the church of baptism factors into it. In any case, it’s an interesting general question as to how the various rites are kept track of and managed as far as individuals are concerned.
In summary, but perhaps not in so many words the answer that ‘Communicants should not kneel for Holy Communion.’ and should be corrected if they do so.
Kneeling for Holy Communion is a long established tradition and custom. 🙂 As I said, ‘the war on devotion continues.’ If a blow can be struck, the attempt is made to strike at those who love tradition on the local level of ‘obedience’ and the little administrative war between the progressives and the devout continues, with the damage being wrecked on devout hearts right and left.
Since the TLM has been officially ‘allowed’ again, putting aside the debate as to whether it ever wasn’t (in theory apparently not, in practice squashed like a bug) kneeling is going to be happening in the U.S. and crossover like it or not.
No doubt we’ll see the progressives soon trying to establish their liturgical disobedience and innovations as customs quickly enough to squash even more tradition, whether it’s dancing, TV screens, roaming around the church, you name it, simply since nothing was done to stop it.
Answering Jimmy’s question about what I’d like to see him talk about…
A few months ago, Jimmy started a series called “Theological Connections”. I’d like to see that picked up again. It’s got me in suspense!
Del Rayva,
I have wondered about that also.
Welcome back. Jimmy.
There is news out that it may be possible to violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Can the Heisenberg Compensators be far behind?
I want a discussion on whether or not a time traveler can go to confession.
The Chicken
Perhaps in line with your book, I’d like to see a discussion of how the sense of sacredness and reverence can be restored to Mass, especially the Novus Ordo since it is the most common and probably not going away any time soon. Perhaps there are parts of the extraordinary form that could be incorporated into the Novus Ordo, or vice versa. I’m saddened by the casualness of it at many parishes and wonder if there is anything that a layman like me could do.
Chicken, you raise a fascinating question. In which time line does a time traveler’s confession have effect thereby determining which sins he must confess? His own? That of the priest? Or does God’s timelessness trump both? For example, if you commit a sin in the future which is the past in your time line, do you need to confess it to a priest who has not yet experienced that future. And when would you be required to perform your penance? Would you have to wait to the future time that you had already committed the sin in? Or could you do it now?
Oh yeah, if I were Hitler in the future, I would not do what he did in the past. Of course, it would be hard to invade the Soviet Union given that it no longer exists.
Its even worse. Suppose you confess in one time lime, but the preist never gave absolution in another time line. In fact, if that particular priest is killed before giving absolution, what happens? This can be fixed by saying that confession attaches to a person, once. Traveling to other time lines do not affect the integrity of a confession obtained in a previous timelime. I am going to call this:
Chicken’s Confession Theorem #1
The Chicken
Speaking of “Mass Confusion”, here is a great piece done by the good men over at “Real Catholic TV” hosted by the spot on Michael Voris, entitled: “Mass Destruction”.
http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/03Massdest/
The crew over there have but in a monumental effort researching the making of the Novus Ordo Mass and the facts they show forth are not news, but still shocking nontheless.
Its really worth the watch.
God bless
What are the changes comming out to mass?